UPDATE May13, 2010: Things pertaining to LeapFish.com, their founders and management, along with related startups are no longer of interest to me, therefore no further comments are allowed on this post. There are also more reliable sources out there (such as Better Business Bureau) to help you make an informed decision about LeapFish.
***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.
If you are trying to get your money back after receiving no leads from advertising on ePerks, chances are you are out of luck. As one real estate agent learned, ePerks is to file for bankruptcy and is offering a 20% refund. If you are not happy with a 20% refund tough luck- you may get nothing after the bankruptcy goes through:
Yesterday, Michael with ePerks called me on my cell phone & said that eperks will be filing for bankruptcy & will not be refunding my money. I was floored. This is really upsetting to me. I cannot believe that a company that is STILL selling memberships would tell me that they will not keep their word. He said that I have 2 options- that I can walk away now with 20% of what they owe me “so that I get something” or I can agree to be pd out over the next yr, but if they file for bankruptcy then they owe me NOTHING. – read the entire article here.
The agent goes on blaming, of all things, government for not covering ePerks under the blanket of recent bailouts:
(Michael) told me that times are really tough for the company with the economy being like it is and unfortunately eperks didn’t get to be part of the government bail-out & doesn’t have the money to pay back all of the people that want their money back.
Well since we are using the recent events in the economy, why don’t we bring up Bernard Madoff as well. Why? Thea answer is LeapLish.com- a new search engine launched by the same group of people. if Unlike for Michael (the sales rep cited above)- things for LeapFish sales representatives look peachy. According to a recruitment ad on Craigslist, a sales rep can make $150,000 a year while working at LeapFish. I am not surprised at all that ePerks decided to fold down their shop, just about after about one month of unsuccessfully trying to get traction with the search engine and even having been humiliated on the world’s leading technology blog TechChrunch.
It has to be said that LeapFish.com and DotNexInc did their best to distance themselves from Brabus Ventures and ePerks. It appears that founders and sales people at LeapFish are infatuated with real estate agents- just take a look how much astroturfing has been done on ActiveRain.
I don’t know how the bankruptcy works. Never filed for one. Never plan to. If it works the way I think it works, it’s a great way to screw your clients. The hell with the clients, just file for bankruptcy start another business. Why shouldn’t life be peachy?
Around August Ben changed his linked in profile to show that he was no longer the CEO of eperks. This was the same time that Brabus Ventures was ditched and all management profiles were removed from Brabus and ePerks …. LeapFish was launched shortly thereafter and DotNext well…. amazing that the DotNext blog celebrates it's "Two Year Birthday" when it's domain name was registered a month ago….
It is interesting to note that as ePerks gives clients pennies on the dollar refunds and tell clients they will be filing for bankruptcy, they continue to take money from new clients….
Also interesting that Ben is "blogging" on maxstartup about how he helps new startups and founders, hilarious!
So the question is who is the CEO of ePerks if Ben is not????
LeapFish equals ePerks but instead of a monthly commitment required an annual payment is required….
Don't worry though, there is a whole new generation of bloggers that will be calling out Ben Behrouzi and DotNext.
Ben, you little rapscallion you, please blog more often. Pretty please.
I'm considering writing a book on online reputation and brand management and I have Ben Behrouzi and only Ben Behrouzi to thank for the volumes of material that he has given us to work with. Written in the right way, it is not outside the realm of possibility for such a
work to become standard collegiate level reading for newly emerging classes dealing with the topic…..
Let's not forget, Ben Behrouzi single handedly ruined the ePerks brand, drove ePerks into Bankruptcy and ruined his personal reputation and lost all integrity by trying to subject his will through bullying, threats and worse. Wow. Sad. He has found out the hard way that those tactics only work on his employees. The best part is that he is incapable of accepting blame or responsibility, which is precisely why LeapFish will likely suffer the same fate as ePerks.
Trace the only reason I posted this is that he continues to call me and other's "online predators". Every time he calls me a predator (or any one else for that matter) will receive a response, and I don't care how many times will he take me to courts.
Again, to me it looks like separating LeapFish from Brabus was not only a reputation management move- although changing his name along the would work much better. I think it was also a move to protect his assets if any.
Just noticed he is trying to figure out Twitter- claiming to my and his attorneys that I am "stalking" and "harassing" his employees by following them on Twitter…..
I would love to introduce him to the following search http://search.twitter.com/search?q=LeapFishif is to make any use of Twitter.
This really should become a textbook example of how to now use social media and internet for any startup.
I get the biggest kick out of ePerks not being a part of the bailouts!
In his latest post his claiming that Google discards the results to page 2 and 3 as a result of low viewership:
Could some one please explain to him the basics of SEO and that Google shows the results based on relevance an not “viewership”.